Can local flexibility markets fix grid congestion with James Johnston (Piclo)

Oct 21, 2025

James Johnston, CEO and co-founder of Piclo, shares insights on local flexibility markets and their potential to address grid congestion. He discusses the pressing threat of grid constraints and how they hinder the energy transition. Johnston highlights innovative projects like ACE, where data centers fund virtual power plants, unlocking significant flexibility revenue. He emphasizes the importance of modular marketplace design and collaboration with distribution and transmission operators to enhance grid efficiency and visibility.

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INSIGHT

Global Platform, Local Execution

Piclo built a single global platform while customizing local implementations with partners for regional regulatory and market differences.
They combine shared technology modules with local playbooks to scale flexibility markets effectively.

ADVICE

Standardize Market Workflows

Use playbooks and repeatable contract terms to accelerate new regional market launches and bootstrap liquidity.
Standardize qualification, auction, delivery, verification and settlement workflows to reduce implementation friction.

ANECDOTE

Pivot From P2P To DSO Flexibility

Piclo shifted from early peer-to-peer energy trading experiments to focus on DSO flexibility procurement when the market matured.
That pivot delivered real demand as DSOs began procuring flexibility at scale in the UK and Europe.

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The grid was never designed for millions of distributed energy assets. Yet today, batteries, EVs, solar, and heat pumps are connecting faster than the network can reinforce - pushing grid capacity to its limits.

The result? Growing connection queues, rising curtailment, and a system struggling to keep pace with electrification. So how do we move from a grid that reacts to constraints to one that actively manages them?

DSOs are evolving and distribution-level flexibility matters now more than ever. What does it take to build market infrastructure that actually works for both system operators and flexibility providers?

In this episode of Transmission, James Johnston - CEO of Piclo, returns to the show to discuss explore how local flexibility markets are being used to manage congestion today and what digitalisation really means for networks.

Key topics covered:

• Why grid constraints are the biggest threat to the energy transition.

• How local flexibility markets are solving real congestion problems today.

• The evolving role of DSOs and how they coordinate with TSOs.

• What digitalisation means for system planning and grid visibility.

• Lessons from live flexibility markets in the UK, Europe, and the US.

About our guest

James Johnston is CEO and co-founder of Piclo, a flexibility marketplace used by network and system operators to procure flexibility from distributed energy resources. Through his work at Piclo, he is helping system operators manage congestion, reduce reinforcement costs, and accelerate the transition to a smarter, more flexible electricity system.

For more information, head to the Piclo website. https://www.piclo.com/

About Modo Energy

Modo Energy helps the owners, operators, builders, and financiers of battery energy storage solutions understand the market - and make the most out of their assets.

All of our interviews are available to watch or listen to on the Modo Energy site. To keep up with all of our latest updates, research, analysis, videos, conversations, data visualizations, live events, and more, follow us on LinkedIn. Check out The Energy Academy, our bite-sized video series breaking down how power markets work.